


dear gravity

by roisale



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, M/M, ennonoya fucked me up big time i'm out
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-01
Updated: 2014-06-20
Packaged: 2018-02-03 01:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1726679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roisale/pseuds/roisale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Oh, um,” the boy at the door says, blinking twice before holding out his hand. “Hi, I’m Ennoshita, your roommate. It’s nice to meet you.”</p><p>“Hey,” Nishinoya says, momentarily sidetracked by how soft he looks, like standing in the light had left him with a faint sunshine glow. He recovers and shakes his hand, adding, “Nice to meet you too! I’m Nishinoya, but most people just call me Noya.”</p><p>(college roommates AU!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. mr. moth, come quick

At the age of eighteen and consequentially, his freshman year of college, Ennoshita Chikara decides he’s got more to worry about than the urban legend commonly referred to as ‘roommates from hell’. He expresses this sentiment to Kinoshita and Narita, his two best friends, the day before his scheduled move-in, when they’re lounging around in Kinoshita’s room. It’s the last time they’ll be able to before they start college for real and thus begin the intimidating transition from Irresponsible Teens to Responsible Adults.

“You’re going to be stuck with them for an entire _year_ , though,” Kinoshita says from his bed, where he’s trying to pretzel his legs into some yoga form or another. He gives up after approximately twenty seconds and sits up with his palms planted in the space between his knees.

“They could end up being terrible,” Narita says, tapping his index finger against the armrest of the spinny chair he’s swiveling in. “That’d be pretty unfortunate.”

“Yeah,” says Kinoshita, nodding emphatically. “What if your roomie is like, a wild party animal?”

Narita turns dramatically to face him, fingers tented and voice dropping intentionally low. “Kleptomaniacs and weird cultists also come to mind, while we’re on the topic of bad roommates.” 

“Dude, that’s edging into horror-story territory,” Kinoshita objects with playful dismay. 

Ennoshita briefly considers the ramifications of spending the school term with a positively abysmal klepto-party-cultist for a roommate. “Well,” he says, lifting his shoulders up in a vague shrug, “I’ll deal with it then. Probably.” 

Kinoshita stares at him for a few seconds before flopping onto his back and redirecting his line of sight to the ceiling. “You just do _not_ care,” he says, exasperation showing in the way he enunciates his words, but he also sounds entirely too fond for Ennoshita to even think about taking him seriously.

“Not really, no,” Ennoshita says, straight-faced, and ducks when Kinoshita throws his pillow at Ennoshita’s head. He ends up getting hit in the face anyway, because surprise, Kinoshita sleeps with _two_ pillows and today, both of them have earned the dubious honor of becoming airborne projectiles. Ennoshita picks them up from the carpet and hugs them to his chest. “I’ve taken your pillows hostage,” he informs Kinoshita very seriously, and pauses. “Here’s where I give you a ransom letter demanding a ridiculous sum of money for their safe return, and also maybe an impromptu musical number about being a villain or something.”

“You,” Narita says, leaning forward and plucking the pillows out of his arms, “are a public menace to pillows everywhere, and you should stop watching so many movies.” 

“I’m majoring in film,” Ennoshita says with a slight smile, suddenly remembering that he is indeed a soon-to-be college student. It doesn’t do much to sober his mood, though; Ennoshita is far too stalwart a boy for such a little thing to get him down. “Watching movies is okay if you’re a film student, right?”

Kinoshita hums, sounding thoughtful. “Only if your roommate doesn’t mind it when you’re playing Titanic at 11 pm, or when you put the movie version of Chicago on repeat-“

“Chicago,” Ennoshita protests, looking personally affronted, “is fantastic, and you know it.”

Narita levels a _look_ at him and Ennoshita can practically read what he wants to say off the two-degree slant of his raised eyebrows. It says something along the lines of _there is a limit to the number of times a sane person will watch a movie, and_ you _know it_ , but instead, he settles for “Let’s hope your roommate agrees.”

  

Twenty-two hours later, Ennoshita is standing in front of a nondescript apartment complex with his schoolbag slung over a shoulder and his phone tucked into one of its pockets. Mystery Roommate had emailed him earlier in the day, and Ennoshita thinks about the four solid minutes he’d spent that morning on trying to decipher the excessive punctuation and emoticon usage. The result of his newly discovered translation skills delivered unto him this message: _your stuff got here yesterday! don’t worry about being locked out or anything, i’m home all day!!! can’t wait to meet you!!_

Mystery Roommate seems to be a likeable person, if a little too enthusiastic about things in life that might not necessarily warrant the energy.

While he’s climbing the stairs, he notes in between steps that it’s a pretty nice place seeing as he’s a first year college student; out of the things he’s heard about college, decent lodging is hardly one of the first things that come to mind.

 _Apartment 10,_ he reminds himself when he reaches the second floor and steps onto the walkway. He comes to a slow stop in front of the fifth door down, eyeing the neat number plate with a minor dose of trepidation before he raises a loosely curled fist and knocks.

There’s a few seconds of movement-induced rustling behind the door. Then the lock turns and Ennoshita finds himself staring at Mystery Roommate, who, in light of very recent happenings, is a mystery no more.

 

By the time he’s eighteen years old, Nishinoya Yuu’s got it figured that he’s practically invincible when it comes to the more banal things in life. After having survived both puberty _and_ high school, he’s pretty sure that his prospective roommate won’t be too hard to deal with. A modest stack of cardboard boxes sitting in the spare bedroom and the neat handwriting on the labels tell him the owner is possibly somewhat fastidious, but orderliness isn’t a cardinal sin; at least, it wasn’t the last time he checked and he thinks, yep, he’ll be fine.

The invincibility clause, he discovers a few months later, which is a few months too late for him to do anything about it, does not apply where his roommate is involved.

He’s sprawled face down on his bed when he hears a light knock on the door at 11:46 a.m. and he starts a little, hopping off the mattress and jumping over the couch on his way through the living room, narrowly avoiding the coffee table when he lands. It only takes him a few seconds to cut past the corner and then his hand is on the doorknob, twisting clockwise. 

“Oh, um,” the boy at the door says, blinking twice before holding out his hand. “Hi, I’m Ennoshita, your roommate. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Hey,” Nishinoya says, momentarily sidetracked by how _soft_ he looks, like standing in the light had left him with a faint sunshine glow. He recovers and shakes his hand, adding, “Nice to meet you too! I’m Nishinoya, but most people just call me Noya.”

Ennoshita nods and smiles politely, as if he’s waiting for something, and Nishinoya does the same until he realizes that he is standing in the doorway and thus being an obstruction, which is something he should have noticed earlier, but it’s far too early in the day for Nishinoya to feel embarrassed about it. “Come in,” he blurts instead, moving to the side. 

“Sorry to intrude,” Ennoshita says before he’s even crossed the entrance, slipping his shoes off and setting them neatly on the floor inside. “Would you mind showing me where my room is?” 

“No problem,” Nishinoya says, and leads him past a lonely potted plant into the main room. There’s a short corridor with two doors facing each other with the apartment’s bedrooms behind them. Nishinoya points to the one on the right and opens it for him. “I moved your stuff there yesterday,” he explains, hoping it hadn’t been too grave of an offense or anything. 

Ennoshita looks a little surprised, but his lips curve up, faintly, and he says, “Thank you,” before he disappears behind the half-open door. 

“Uh huh,” Nishinoya says, vaguely aware that his mouth is moving and making sounds that could possibly be construed as words, depending on the language. A cheerful buzz from his room, muffled through the door, snaps him back to full functioning. Another text is flashing intermittently on the phone screen by the time he gets to it, where it’s sitting on the dresser next to his bed. The name reads _saeko!!_ and Nishinoya settles down for a nice long conversation with his pseudo older sister.

 _Ryuu says you got a roomie??_ the first text asks, and just as he’s starting to reply, his phone chimes again, reminding him that there are now three messages he ought to read before he says anything.

Her second text wants to know if his roommate is nice; more importantly, is his roommate cute, and do they get along? Text number three says she and Ryuunosuke are going to drop by tomorrow afternoon, if that’s okay with him because Ryuu wants to see if Nishinoya’s place is nicer than his and _make sure to warn your roommate beforehand, got it?_

Nishinoya contemplates this for all of two seconds before tapping out a reply to all three. The parts that are composed from an alphabet say something like _i did get a roomie!! he just got here a few minutes ago and he seems super nice so far!! we’ll get along and hell yeah he’s cute, you can see for yourself tomorrow if he’s not busy!_

He hits send, and then it occurs to him that he actually has to ask Ennoshita if he’s fine with people coming over, first. Right.

“Hey, Ennoshita,” he says a few moments later, when he’s standing in the meter-wide space between their bedrooms. The door’s still half-open, but there isn’t any obvious indication that Ennoshita is present. “You okay with people coming over tomorrow?” 

There’s a dull thump, presumably from something heavy being set on the floor, and Ennoshita’s head comes into view above the bed when he looks up. “Yeah, it’s fine,” he says with a small huff, rubbing the back of his neck. “Should I go out then, or – ”

“Nope,” Nishinoya finds himself saying before he even processes the word, and raps the doorframe with a knuckle for emphasis. “Well, not unless you want to.” 

“Alright. Thanks for asking beforehand,” Ennoshita says with a smile that’s sunset-slow, and that’s the end of _that_ conversation, so Nishinoya retreats to the safety of his own room, where he won’t be in danger of sudden death-by-fatal-attraction.

 _So is he busy??_ prompts Saeko, who manages to fit enough curiosity to kill a cat nine times over in a relatively innocuous text.

 _no_ , Nishinoya tells her, and adds, _he’s really cute be careful!!_

 _I think you’re the one who needs to be careful, ya dork,_ Saeko texts back after a few seconds, and he can’t really argue because, yeah, he probably is.

He rolls onto his back and hopes he manages to make it through the school year alive.


	2. you're out of luck

“Shit, son,” Saeko hisses to him the next day, wide-eyed and incredulous. “You weren’t kidding when you said he was cute.” 

“I _know,_ ” Nishinoya whispers back, shooting a glance at the kitchen area to make sure Ennoshita hadn’t heard them. “Ryuu, what do you – ”

“Like hell I’m getting involved in this,” Tanaka says, holding his hands up and backing towards the wall.

“Involved in what?” Ennoshita sets a teapot and four cups on the coffee table with steady hands, like the possibility of spilling hot boiling water over them wasn’t a threat or anything.

Nishinoya jolts in his seat, knocking a couch cushion to the floor. “Did _not_ notice you there.”

“You didn’t notice that pillow, either, but who’s counting?” Ennoshita says, blandly pleasant, and Nishinoya swears Saeko’s smirking but the proof of it is hidden behind the tilt of the teacup against her lips.

“So, what are you majoring in, Ennoshita?” asks Saeko after she’s taken a few sips, leaning towards him with her chin propped on laced fingers. Her nail polish is femme-fatale-red today, and it reminds Nishinoya of those lead actresses in action movies, although he likes to think Saeko would be ten times as competent and twice as dangerous, should circumstances deem it necessary. 

Ennoshita takes a seat next to him, sitting down relaxed but also with the kind of good posture that’s fundamentally counterproductive to the concept of couches. “Film,” he says, and Nishinoya blinks. 

It’s not exactly earth-shattering news to him, though, seeing as he’d walked into Ennoshita’s room yesterday with a take-out menu to ask if he wanted dinner, only to end up spending an hour helping him organize an impressively extensive movie collection instead.

(“The Princess Bride?” Nishinoya asks, eyeing the DVD cover with more than a little curiosity.)  
  
(“A work of art, really,” Ennoshita says by way of explanation, and then he hands him the _Lord of the Rings_ trilogy, tucked tidily in a well-kept box set.) 

“For real? That’s pretty baller,” Saeko says; the conversation then takes a left turn onto Tangential Avenue and subsequently, an in-depth discussion of _Battle Royale_.

Small talk over tea persists along and off these lines for a few more hours, mostly because it derails from ‘small talk over tea’ to ‘Saeko tells stories about getting absolutely trashed at parties over tea’, and Nishinoya deems it to be a perfectly acceptable housewarming gift. After she’s gone through maybe a fourth of her less raunchy social anecdotes, Saeko and Tanaka say their goodbyes and the rectangle of light that creeps in through the open door glows low and golden. “See you when the term starts,” Tanaka says, slapping Nishinoya’s back and nodding to Ennoshita with an easy sort of grin.

“Have fun in college, boys,” Saeko tells them, her hands on her hips and a mischievous glint playing in her eyes. And then they’re both gone, leaving Ennoshita and Nishinoya standing in the doorway, faces lit up in patches by the day’s last scraps of sun glare. 

“Well,” remarks Ennoshita afterwards, when they’re washing the dishes, “That was informational, and also terrifying.” 

“Pretty wild, right?” Nishinoya says, in between rinsing out soap lather and soapy water. He’s going over the finer details of getting completely wasted at a party, and he comes to the conclusion that it’d be a lot more fun than Ennoshita seems to think. “So I guess you’re staying away from parties after this, huh?” 

“Hmm,” Ennoshita hums after he finishes drying the clean cups with a dishtowel. “I don’t think I’d be brave enough to survive a college party, if Saeko’s stories are anything to go by.”

“Yeah, you don’t seem like the kind of guy who’d agree to spin-the-bottle shotgunning,” Nishinoya says, trying to picture it, and then he stops abruptly because first of all, _no_. There are things you’re allowed to imagine your very cute roommate doing, and then there are things you’re definitely _not_. 

Ennoshita, thankfully, remains unaware of his internal struggle and wipes the countertop dry without comment. At this point, Nishinoya’s not sure what to say; two people, he reasons, ought to be louder than one, but the kitchen is still quiet even though they’re standing elbow-to-ribs in front of the sink. 

“By the way,” Ennoshita begins, and Nishinoya looks up at him so fast a bone cracks somewhere in his neck, and he winces. Ennoshita pauses to grace him with a raised eyebrow before continuing. “Sorry, it’s just – I have to pick up my course books tomorrow and I don’t have a spare key, so I was wondering if you – ” 

“Crap,” Nishinoya says, because it’s been over twenty-four hours since Ennoshita moved in and he still hasn’t given him the key and that was super dumb of him, wasn’t it? “I totally forgot, the spare key’s on the – you know the plant under the light switch, yeah, it’s duct taped to the side of the pot, so – ”

“I don’t think I want to know why that is, but thanks,” Ennoshita says, letting the words trail behind him on his way to the living room. Nishinoya leans back against the counter and watches him go, wondering belatedly if Ennoshita would need scissors to cut through that ancient duct tape or something and where did he put them again? Thankfully, Ennoshita’s found out where most of the utilities and utensils are by now; a few minutes later, the tap is running again and when it shuts off, Ennoshita’s got a pair of wet scissors in the sink and a clean key held between his thumb and forefinger. “Duct tape is incredibly gross, so please never do that again,” he says, and then vanishes into his room.

“Yes, sir,” he says, mostly to the potted plant sitting forlorn on the floor. The only answer he gets is the sound of water draining through pipes and thin walls. Nishinoya falls onto the couch and hopes it won’t take too long for him to get used to it all.

  

A full week of peaceful cohabitation passes, if Ennoshita doesn’t count the mishap with the stray cat behind the building (“Nishinoya, you do know that you’re not supposed to feed them actual cream, right?”), or the incident with the sink (“I’d ask how you got your hand stuck down the drain, but I’m not sure I want to know,”), and if he’s feeling especially generous he’ll overlook the 2 a.m. text begging him to come to the nearby park _right now_ (“Yes, I know these bunnies are cute, but _why_ are you stuck in a bush in the middle of the night?”). Ennoshita finds himself in the second row of his Introduction to Film Studies class wondering if carrying gardening shears on his person would be illegal, and, well, it doesn’t seem to be a _felony_ , but it’d be pretty alarming to the general public. The clock strikes 10 and the sound of talking stops being background noise; Ennoshita reminds himself that it’s his first day of college and why is he thinking about the legal consequences of gardening shears, of all things? 

His professor walks up to the front of the classroom, which Ennoshita takes as his cue to shut down any and all remaining thoughts concerning the issue of shrubbery clippers.

 

“Hey, Ennoshita!” 

Ennoshita hasn’t even reached their apartment yet when Nishinoya comes running up the stairs, but he turns around and waits anyway out of common courtesy. “Hey,” he says once Nishinoya’s within reasonable talking range.

“How’re your classes? Do you like your profs? Tanaka said you were in one of his breadth classes and – ” He stops when Ennoshita extends a hand and places it in front of his face.

“Please slow down, like, right now,” says Ennoshita, lowering his hand and trying to organize appropriate answers in his head. “My classes are fine so far, my professors are nice, and yeah, Tanaka’s in my English class. Why do you ask?” He kind of has a sneaking suspicion as to why Nishinoya’s curious, but he opts to invest in the thing called hope by feigning ignorance.

“ _Because_ ,” Nishinoya says, rocking on the heels of his feet, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards. “I wanna know if the thing with the prof was true, she’s from Kyoto, right – ”

“He _told_ you about that?” Ennoshita can’t stop his voice from cracking and he feels the tips of his ears start to burn with embarrassment when he thinks about the unfortunate encounter he’d had with his myopic professor.

“So it happened?” Nishinoya asks, and his lips are pressed tight like he’s trying not to laugh but it doesn’t work; Ennoshita covers his face to hide the rising heat in his cheeks and then Nishinoya completely loses it, breaking into loud peals of laughter that could cut through glaciers.

“It happened,” Ennoshita admits weakly, doing his best not to remember. “Let’s stop talking about it.”

“Okay, fine,” Nishinoya says, still looking entirely too entertained. “But you’ll laugh about it one day.” 

“That day is not today, or anytime soon,” Ennoshita retorts, distinctly unamused, and turns around to unlock their apartment door.

Nishinoya follows him into the entranceway, kicking his shoes off as he does. “If you say so,” he says, making a beeline for the kitchen. “Oh, I’ll be out later tonight, so don’t worry about me!” 

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Ennoshita says dryly, and then his quandary regarding the legality of garden shears comes to mind. “Am I going to have to cut you out of a bush again?” 

“Nah, it’s just a party to kick off the school year for the freshmen,” Nishinoya calls from in front of the fridge. “I mean, I don’t _plan_ on bushes being involved, but you never know, right?”

“Right,” Ennoshita says, hoping he’ll make it through the night without adding any new scratches to the thin webs of raised pink on his hands and forearms. “Make good decisions and don’t get arrested or anything, please.”

 

When Nishinoya stumbles back at 3 in the morning, Ennoshita silently ticks off _party animal_ on the list of ‘things my roommate is _not_ , maybe’ and he thinks, yeah, he can deal with that, probably, unless future events prove Nishinoya to be either a kleptomaniac or a cultist. 

And then he hauls himself out of bed to go see if Nishinoya’s not passed out on the floor or anything because he is a decent person and that’s what decent people do; check up on their possibly-drunk roommates to prevent them from catching a cold or an uncomfortable sleeping position. It’s 3:20 a.m. by the time he makes sure Nishinoya’s sleeping in bed instead of sprawled in the doorway and he says to himself, _two out of three isn’t bad, right?_


	3. hate me baby, maybe i'm a piece of art

As it turns out, two out of three _is_ that bad and the next morning finds the apartment oddly quiet, either out of consideration for Nishinoya’s raging headache or because Nishinoya’s feeling a little too much kinship to hell at the moment to fulfill his usual quota of noise. 

“You have morning classes today, Nishinoya,” Ennoshita tells him unsympathetically. Nishinoya doesn’t respond, and he’s barely visible under the gathered mass of his blankets, so Ennoshita sighs and tugs sharply at a corner of the comforter. “Nishinoya, _please_ get out of bed.”

He gets a subdued groan for an answer, and then Nishinoya rolls over, squinting at the sunlight filtering through his window with intense animosity. “Goddamn,” he croaks after a few seconds, looking wretched and dismal. “I’m _so_ hungover.” 

“I know,” says Ennoshita. “Rise and shine.” 

“How about I don’t do either of those,” Nishinoya offers, but he sits up anyway, clutching his head like he’s trying to keep it from falling apart or something. Sometime during the night his spiked hair had given up on its fight against the laws of physics and now Nishinoya looks like a disgruntled middle schooler, nose scrunched up and lips pulled into a half-pout, half-grimace. It’s cute, and also kind of hilarious. “What?” he asks, catching Ennoshita’s smirk.

Ennoshita represses the urge to laugh and leans in, intrigued by a wildly stray cowlick sticking up on the top of Nishinoya’s head. “So what do you want for breakfast?” 

Nishinoya starts hard, and then cringes, presumably due to his headache. “Everything.” 

“Eggs and toast, then,” Ennoshita says, walking out of the room. 

Halfway between putting a slice of bread into the toaster and cracking two eggs into the skillet, Ennoshita wonders if it’ll be a regular occurrence; to be fair, it wouldn’t really affect him if he didn’t feel so obligated to help out. He’s deliberating over the contents of a potential hangover kit when Nishinoya shuffles out of his bedroom and into the living room, stubs his toe on the couch, and promptly topples onto said couch. “How do you like your eggs?” he calls, not bothering to turn around.

“Sunny side up,” Nishinoya says feebly, sounding stifled. Ennoshita takes this to mean that Nishinoya has his face pressed into a couch cushion or something and leaves the eggs alone to cook unscrambled for a few more minutes. When the eggs are done and the toast is peeking out of the toaster slots, he slides them onto a clean plate and picks up a fork from the cutlery drawer on his way out. 

“I don’t think we have any painkillers,” Ennoshita says, setting the plate on the coffee table. “I’ll pick some up after class.” 

“You don’t have to,” Nishinoya tries to refuse, but Ennoshita shushes him immediately, waving the fork in the air and indicating that he should take it, shut up, and eat. Nishinoya takes it and shuts up, looking comically disoriented.

“What are the chances of this happening again?” Ennoshita wants to know, for strictly statistical purposes. He’s already calculating the cost of preparing hangover recovery kits and he’s thinking _prices go down in bulk but buying drugs in large quantities is extremely suspicious_ when Nishinoya coughs unobtrusively.

“Um,” Nishinoya begins, sliding off the couch and scooting himself into a comfortable sitting position on the floor, “Hell if I know, actually. It’s only the beginning of the year.”

 _Which is terrifying,_ Ennoshita almost says, but doesn’t. “So it is,” he says instead, and then another similarly frightening thought comes to him. “You didn’t do anything illegal last night, did you?”

Nishinoya stares at him for ten seconds, and then pulls his breakfast closer. “You mean, besides underage drinking? Because that definitely happened. But, uh, nah. Probably.”

Okay, so technically he _had_ broken the law, but it was the kind of law literally nobody gave a shit about except for maybe police officers and other righteous enforcers of justice. Ennoshita breathes out. He takes some solace in the fact that his roommate is not a criminal on the lam, at least, not yet, and he studiously avoids thinking about the possibilities of what might happen in the near future. “Good,” he says, electing to ignore the ‘ _probably’_ Nishinoya had tacked on to the end of his sentence. 

Nishinoya’s munching his toast with an oddly content expression on his face, and he swallows. “Thanks,” he says, and shoves the rest of it into his mouth, cheeks looking slightly pink. Ennoshita watches him eat, feeling something that could potentially be construed as affection, if he ignored that it was shot through and through with a heavy dose of vexation. 

“Okay, I’ve got a class at 10, so I’m leaving right about... now,” Ennoshita says after glancing at the wall clock, getting to his feet with a quiet huff. “Here’s to hoping your hangover goes away soon.”

“Mmf,” Nishinoya tries through a mouth full of food, and then he gives up on verbal communication. He waves goodbye instead, and Ennoshita’s out the door a few minutes later, checking his phone to make sure he’ll be on time for the next train. Three classes, and then enough free time to finish all his homework as well as a convenience store visit for Nishinoya’s hangover; Ennoshita thinks, that’s okay, at least he’s got his day planned out and he really, _really_ hopes nothing too eventful happens to mess it up.

  

“Holy shit,” Tanaka says, blinking. “You look like hell, Noya.” 

“Thanks,” Nishinoya says, shutting his eyes against the lecture hall’s fluorescent glare. “I don’t even remember half of what happened last night. Maybe like, a third?” He sits very still in his chair, having learned earlier that day that moving around would make his skull feel like it was splitting apart, which was horrible and not something he wanted to repeat if he could help it. Of course, living involved moving, and Nishinoya didn’t exactly lead a sedentary lifestyle.

Tanaka takes the seat next to him, pulling the chair out as quietly as possible. “No kidding. You must’ve been smashed as fuck. What was it like when you woke up?”

 _Not that bad_ , he wants to say, but then he’d have to explain _why_ and that would be a huge mistake on his behalf. He tries hard to avoid thinking about how Ennoshita was the first thing he’d seen that morning, looking good, really good, while leaning over him with that slight half-smile on his lips, even through a hangover filter that made the rest of the world seem like the seventh circle of hell. He fails spectacularly. “Well, everything hurt,” he says, making every attempt to will the thoughts away, “But Ennoshita made me breakfast and said he’d go out and buy some painkillers after he’s done with class, so it wasn’t _as_ terrible as it could have been.” Nishinoya frowns, mulling over the scarce scraps of memory left over from last night. He remembers coming home, but he thinks he might have passed out after that and that just begs the question of _how did he get into bed?_  

“Seriously? That was nice of him. I guess the honeymoon phase is still going strong,” Tanaka says, without malice. 

“Honeymoon?” Nishinoya repeats, a little too preoccupied to pick up on implications that would have existed if he hadn’t been talking to Tanaka. As things stand, he is, in fact, talking to Tanaka, and therefore any and all implications remain nonexistent.

“Like how when you first get to know someone, they’re great and everything’s fantastic until the honeymoon is over and you find out that they’re actually... people,” Tanaka tries to explain. “You know what I mean?”

“Yes,” Nishinoya says. “But also, no. Ennoshita’s been bailing me out since he moved in, so I don’t think – ”

“I meant you,” Tanaka cuts in bluntly. 

“Oh,” says Nishinoya, reconsidering. “Yeah, I think he might be an actual saint.” A put-upon, long-suffering saint, but a saint nonetheless. Nishinoya thinks that before the school year ends, Ennoshita’s expression will have frozen permanently in the patented _look_ he gives Nishinoya so often. It’s somewhere in between _why do you do this to me_ and _what were you thinking_ with a side dish of _Nishinoya, please._ Nishinoya doesn’t mind in the least, though; Ennoshita’s face is nice to see no matter what, and that’s that. He fails to notice the dopey smile already curving its way into reality until Tanaka snickers.

“Damn,” he observes, “You’ve got it bad.” 

“I know,” says Nishinoya, because he does.

 


	4. not the boy i was

Ennoshita’s taken to doing his homework on the couch, having discovered after a few days that the chance to sit snug in a cozy blanket nest was way too comfortable to pass up. It’s also less distance to the door, for the nights when Nishinoya goes out and comes home too inebriated to coordinate himself properly. Today is not one of those nights, however, and this is where they are, three weeks from the start of the school year and bathing in the light from a peach-colored late afternoon. Ennoshita’s sitting with his ankles crossed on the right side of the couch, part of a quilt draped loosely around his shoulders; Nishinoya catnaps on the left, under the rest of the blanket. Nishinoya had gotten into the questionable habit of co-occupying the couch with him about thirteen days ago and Ennoshita hadn’t felt particularly inclined to complain about it.

Absolutely nothing has changed since then, and he taps out a few more lines of his essay before clicking ‘save’ and closing his laptop with a slight exhalation. He takes a few seconds for a quick stretch before he squints sideways at Nishinoya, vaguely wondering when he’d managed to steal most of the blanket. “You’re actually pretty sneaky, aren’t you?” he asks.

Nishinoya nests himself into the couch. “You didn’t stop me, so I figured it was okay with you,” he mumbles, a yawn creeping into the edges of his voice. It’s tiny, and also terrible, mostly because it’s cute, and unfairly so. Ennoshita realizes with a growing sense of alarm that he can practically _feel_ his rationality slipping away, and he ends up scrambling over himself in an effort to recover it.

“Point taken,” Ennoshita says after a long pause, and he’s certainly not thinking about the sleep-flush fading fast from Nishinoya’s face, nope, not at all. No, no, _no_. He takes a breath and moves on systematically, nodding at the papers on the table. “I forgot to ask earlier, but rent’s due soon, isn’t it?” 

“Mm,” says Nishinoya, unwinding and propping himself up on his elbows. “Yeah. The landlord already knows you’re rooming with me, so there are two sets of bills, I think. And – oh!” 

Ennoshita eyes him warily. “Oh?”

“Your first name’s Chikara, right? Saw it on the envelope when I was getting the mail,” Nishinoya says, dangling his arm over the edge of the couch and letting his fingers brush the floor. “Funny how we’ve been rooming for a month and I had no clue until now, isn’t it?”

“Hilarious,” says Ennoshita unconvincingly. He’s well aware that Nishinoya is on a first-name basis with nearly everyone he knows, but somehow he’d been hoping it wouldn’t happen to him. “Well, to be fair, not many people call me by my first name, so it’s not – ” 

“Chikara,” Nishinoya says, and it’s like he’s conducting a sound test to an audience of one. He sits up abruptly and turns towards him, tucking his knees to his chest. “It’s a nice name! D’you mind if I use it?” 

“I really don’t think I could stop you,” Ennoshita says. “Do I have a choice?”

Nishinoya laughs, impish and bright. “Nope! Hey, do you wanna stop by the convenience store tomorrow? The weather’s getting hot and I’m in the mood for popsicles!”

So Ennoshita resigns himself to the inevitable. “Yeah, okay. You feel like watching a movie while we’re at it?”

“Hell yeah,” says Nishinoya, and that’s that.

 

Neither of them have classes the next day, so by the time the temperature starts to climb, they’re already back in their air conditioned apartment with a box of popsicles and _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_ ready to go on Ennoshita’s computer.

“I like the title,” Nishinoya says, coming back from the kitchen with a bowl of buttered popcorn in one hand and an orange ice pop in the other. “What is it, though?”

“A masterpiece,” Ennoshita answers, and hits play.

 

\-- 

“His _arm –_ ” 

“I know.” 

“His _other arm –_ ”

“There it goes, yeah.”

\--

 

The only thing they get done that day is a cult-hit movie marathon.

 

  

“You sure it’s okay for us to come over?” Kinoshita asks a few days later, tiptoeing into the living room.

“Stop that,” Ennoshita scolds, tapping Kinoshita’s shoulder lightly. “You look like a burglar. And it’s fine, Nishinoya said he’d be back late, anyway.” 

“Ah,” says Narita. He closes the door behind him and takes off his shoes. “What’s he like? You haven’t really said much about him.” Kinoshita looks back, curious. 

“Obnoxious,” Ennoshita says without missing a beat. “He’s too loud in the mornings, he comes back drunk at 2 a.m. every four days, it’s like he doesn’t know what personal space is, and lately, he’s been stealing the blankets. Honestly, I’ve never felt more like a single mother.” He nearly walks into the potted plant on his way to the light switch and reminds himself to water the thing sometime in the near future.

“Stealing the blankets?” Kinoshita echoes. He and Narita exchange a quick glance, like they’re running back everything he just said to each other.

“I’d like to know if there’s any context for this,” Narita ventures. He’s too polite to just straight up ask if his relationship with Nishinoya is the kind where they sleep together. 

Kinoshita, however, is not. “Are you dating?”

“It’s not like that,” says Ennoshita, because it’s not. “I do my homework on the couch, so I make blanket forts and he likes to take naps, also on the couch...” He trails off. “There’s no good way to explain this, actually.” 

“No, I don’t think there is,” Narita says, lips twitching. He clears his throat. “So you get along, then.” 

Ennoshita stops to consider that. Living with Nishinoya is like living with a seven year old when it comes to mornings; when he’s not hungover, he’s wide awake and bothering him at what he personally considers to be ungodly hours for a pair of college students (“Chikara! Hey, Chikara! Let’s watch _Pacific Rim_ today! You said it had giant robots and monsters, right?” “ _Why_ are you in my room at five a.m.?”). He bounces off the walls like they’re made of trampolines and when he gets pumped up, Ennoshita’s eighty-percent sure the whole complex knows about it because it’s just that _loud._ If someone’s throwing a party on campus or otherwise, Nishinoya is, unsurprisingly, also there. Sometimes Ennoshita ends up staying awake hours past his self-imposed bedtime just to make sure Nishinoya comes home safe and sound. It’s been complete and utter hell on his sleeping schedule, and the worst thing is, he’s really got no one to blame but himself.

But when Ennoshita gets back from his classes, there’s always a sincere apology waiting for him in the form of a jar of sea pineapples sitting on the table, accompanied by a note with ‘ _i don’t know why you like these things because they’re actually really gross but here you go!! sorry for the trouble!!!’_ scrawled on it. Ennoshita makes it a point to eat some during dinner even though he’s wondering how many of them it’s possible to consume before it qualifies as unhealthy, but Nishinoya beams and suddenly the resulting heartburn is worth it, somehow. Five a.m. doesn’t seem that bad anymore, and if he’s being honest with himself he really, _really_ likes watching movies together. Nishinoya laughs in all the right places and cries with him when sad scenes break out the poignant violins and slow-mo; he cheers for the heroes and claps at the ending credits even though it’s just the two of them curled up on the couch. He doesn’t complain when Ennoshita starts pointing out the lighting and camera angles or little bits of tangentially related trivia he’d picked up years before. And somewhere along the line Ennoshita had gotten used to spending hours at a time with Nishinoya slouched small against his side, like there was just nowhere else to _be._  

“Yeah,” he says at last. “We get along.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ngl i was gonna write like 1.7k more words and then i figured i'd reached a pretty good stopping point


	5. i can feel the weather in my bones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> boring update but summer vacation just started for me so

“Remember, we’ve got a movie night next Thursday,” Kamasaki Yasushi says, shutting off the projector and ending the week’s meeting. He’s the vice-president of the university’s film club and nobody’s quite sure _why_ , since he’s a second year in the mechanical engineering department, but there’s not much they can do about that. In all probability, it’s because they just don’t have a president, for reasons nobody’s ever been able to find out. Kamasaki’s major aside, he’s still holder of the “Least Likely To Be In Film Club” award, but Ennoshita appreciates his taste in movies; all of his picks are visually stunning, without exception.

“Oh, and feel free to bring your friends with you,” Kamasaki adds, almost as an afterthought, when they’re all filing out of the room.

It is admittedly a little alarming that Nishinoya is the first person that comes to mind in this situation, but Ennoshita’s used to dealing with these kinds of crises by now, and in the end, all he does is remind himself to ask Nishinoya if he’s up for it before he goes to the library.

 

Nishinoya checks his cell phone for the sixth time in as many minutes, like maybe the distinct absence of messages from Ennoshita was due to some sort of anomaly he could fix if he played peek-a-boo with it enough. He feels pretty confident that he’d be able to catch it unawares, eventually. The reason for both of these endeavors, though, is that Ennoshita has been texting him more often these days, to Nishinoya’s delight, and it’s just about time to get a message from him. To his lesser delight, the texts are all variations on the theme of _I’m studying in the library tonight, so please don’t freak out or anything if I’m not home by the time you get back,_ sometimes with a few postscripts like _By the way, there’s food in the fridge if you get hungry_ or _You have an essay due in two days, so you should get on that, preferably in the very near future._

He’s not sure he even knows where the library is, now that he thinks about it. The one elusive recollection of college orientation he’s held on to fails him utterly in this time of need. To be fair, he hasn’t ever had much of a reason to go there, but after nearly a month of coming back to an empty living room, Nishinoya starts to wonder where the college keeps its maps.

His phone buzzes ticklish, and Nishinoya jolts, scrambling to retrieve it from his pockets, even though in all likelihood it’s just another polite announcement informing him that he’s on his own for the night. Ennoshita’s been coming home pretty late recently, though he says he usually manages to catch the last running trains of the night. The first time Ennoshita had gotten home after 11, there’d been an unfortunate _incident,_ and Ennoshita hasn’t stopped reminding him about it since. At any rate, the newest addition to his archive of Roommate Texts says: _Do you want to watch a movie with me next Thursday? We’ve both got the day off and the film club is screening Ghibli movies, so I thought you might like to come._

Which is... not what he’d been expecting, but he sure as hell isn’t going to complain about it.

It takes him one, two, three, four rereads until the general meaning sinks in; one more for good measure and by the last, he’s got it memorized like the layout of their apartment. _Oh,_ he thinks, surprise running high through the fingers hovering over his phone’s keypad. This is the first time Ennoshita has ever officially asked him to do anything with him in their free time, seeing as their movie nights are normally casual, spontaneous, convenient, and comfortable. Knowing him, though, the invitation probably still falls well within his boundaries of ‘casual’, ‘convenient’, and ‘comfortable’.

He texts back after a few minutes, hoping it’ll come off as low-key: _yeah definitely!!!_  

 _Okay,_ Ennoshita tells him. A long pause, and then: _It’s another library night, but I’ll be home by 10._

And just like that, things return to routine, if Nishinoya ignores the fluttering in his stomach that stays even after he exhales.

 

The time Ennoshita spends in the library increases in direct proportion to his professor’s sudden partiality for giving long essays and research assignments, which is fine; he can handle that without too much stress. He’s sitting in the main computer lab on the first floor, occupying a little cubicle near the back of the room and staring down a stack of reference books at least forty centimeters tall, if not more. 

“Don’t strain your eyes,” a soft voice admonishes from his left. “You know what they say, if looks could kill...” 

Ennoshita looks up. “Hey, Shimizu.”

Shimizu Kiyoko is a second-year business student who just so happens to share Ennoshita’s taste in studying spaces – they’d only really started talking when he offered to help her with a massive amount of heavy boxes that couldn’t possibly be carried by one person.

She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and takes her seat next to him. “Do you have to get through all of that?” 

“Yeah, but not any time soon,” he says, opening the book on top. “I just thought I’d get them all together and written down so I don’t have to waste time when I’m trying to cite my sources. What about you? You look like you’ve got a lot of work, too.” He nods towards her book bag, which is leaning against the table leg, like it can’t quite manage to balance on its own with all the papers and binders packed inside. 

“Marketing can be deadly,” she says simply, gracing him with small smirk that answers approximately zero of his questions. 

He raises an eyebrow. “That makes it sound like you’re the deadly one.” It might be a baseless assumption, but Ennoshita actually has no doubt that Kiyoko could kill a man if necessary. She doesn’t have nerves of steel – that’s too weak for someone like her. Maybe they’re forged from titanium alloy, instead. He hopes he’ll never have to find out if this is true. 

“Hmm,” she says noncommittally, arching an eyebrow. Her phone lights up and the alert sounds like a bell, but quieter, and she glances at the screen, a bigger smile threatening to break past the controlled set of her lips. This is nothing new to him – it’s a frequent kind of happening, to the point where he’s gathered that there is a very specific, special someone that Kiyoko texts throughout her day. Ennoshita supports this theory with a few other things he’s picked up along the way; for one, Kiyoko’s little happy glow only ever surfaces when it comes to one particular ringtone – it’s gentle and bright, like a wind chime in spring – but she uses the default notification sound for just about everyone else, as far as Ennoshita can tell. Right after replying to Mystery Special Someone’s texts, Kiyoko starts to toy with the star-shaped charm on her phone, absentmindedly rolling it between her left thumb and ring finger like she’s making sure it’s still there. The final nail in the coffin, as it were, is that for the past three Fridays, Kiyoko’s been packing up at six, saying she has to get back to her hometown to meet with someone. She comes back the Monday after looking serene, but the light bounce to her step is incriminating evidence. Connecting these observations holds little to no significance for Ennoshita, though, since he’s never been the nosy type. So he waves hello, she raises a hand on her way over (it is a queenly sort of wave, he thinks), and they settle in for another quiet night of studying. 

“So what’s your essay about?” Kiyoko’s got the star charm caught between her fingers, like always, and she’s pulling out an intimidatingly thick file folder out of her bag with her other hand. The papers inside look like spreadsheet printouts and mockup-meeting minutes.

“Kurosawa Akira’s postwar works,” he says. “I’m focusing on _Drunken Angel_ and _Stray Dog,_ I think.” He’s going to have to go into the archives and dig up old newspaper articles from way back when; in other words, the late 1940’s. 

Kiyoko tilts her head. “Well, do your best.”

Ennoshita opens another book. “You, too.”

 

Nishinoya’s sprawled on his bed again after making an attempt to occupy the couch alone (it hadn’t felt right, so he left) and severely over-watering the potted plant. As things stand, the couch is empty and the plant is marinating in mud and it’s 9:01 and that’s _fifty-nine_ more minutes until at least one of those situations will be rectified.

“I don’t even _like_ math,” he says to his pillow. Predictably, it doesn’t respond.

His phone buzzes and he rolls over onto his stomach to answer whoever it is, because he’s dropped his phone on his face more than once while texting on his back and it’s embarrassing, every single time, even if he _is_ alone. The screen lights up when he opens up his messages; it’s from Ennoshita again, and Nishinoya blinks.

 _Trains are running late,_ Ennoshita informs him. _I think there’s an hour’s delay? Please don’t mistake me for a criminal this time around._

_i said i was sorry!!_

A long hour and fifty-four minutes later, the door swings open; Ennoshita’s in the middle of a yawn when Nishinoya bounces to the door. “You’re not armed, are you?” Ennoshita asks with a faint smile and it feels like sunshine and Nishinoya holds up his hands to demonstrate that no, he is not armed and it is perfectly safe for him to come in. 

Ennoshita stops by the plant with raised eyebrows. “I appreciate the effort,” he says, nudging the pot with his toe, and shrugs off his schoolbag.

It’s 11:56 and the plant is still drowning, but now the couch is occupied and that’s, well, that’s just the way he likes it.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you twit fam for reading over things and catherine in particular because, yknow, college au ennonoya?? good lordy i sure do wonder where this came from hahah aha end me (2nd & 6th circles confirmed)


End file.
